


Comprehensive Care

by azureheavens



Category: Tales of Graces
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Humor, POV Child, Pre-Canon, Slice of Life, Wordcount: 2.000, mmm that's good Child Arc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-10
Updated: 2015-07-10
Packaged: 2018-04-08 14:43:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4309167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/azureheavens/pseuds/azureheavens
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Asbel's latest adventure of seeing how high he could climb up the apple tree in Lhant ends with him falling and getting a nasty cut on his left hand.  Now the last thing he needs is for an adult to find out about it. Or worse: Cheria Barnes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Comprehensive Care

The trunk of the apple tree was cool to the touch and slightly sticky. Leaves brushed against his head as Asbel climbed up, branch by branch. It felt pretty good to have just turned eleven and finally have his legs long enough to push himself up to each branch, even though he did need a lift from Hubert to get to the first one. And with finally no adults around to bother him, he could see how high up he could go! That is until he suddenly lost his grip, raked his hand against the bark, and stumbled backwards to the ground with a yelp.

“Asbel!” Hubert cried out, running to where his brother fell.

“Argh.. dammit.” Asbel slowly sat himself up, hissing in pain. “Whew! That hurt a lot.”

“Are you okay?” Hubert had his hands clamped together by his chest. “That was a pretty long drop!”

Asbel waved a free hand at his little brother while putting a pained smile on his face. “Yeah, I’ll be fine. Just have to get back up and try that again.” He pushed himself to his feet, still a little dizzy from his fall. Suddenly Hubert let out a gasp and clasped his hands to his mouth. “What is it now?”

Hubert outstretched a shaking finger. “Y-your hand! It’s bleeding!”

“Huh? Come on, I told you that I’m fi-AAUGH!”

No, it was NOT fine. A gash had appeared in Asbel’s left hand, which stained his palm red. Bits of dirt and tree bark stuck out in the glistening wound. Once he got a look at it, pain rocketed up his arm and he clutched it with his free hand.

“You probably got it when you fell out of the tree,” Hubert said as he timidly walked up to get a closer look at the wound. He immediately let out a whimper. “I-I don’t think we can fix it ourselves. We have to find a grown up to help.”

Asbel balked. “What? No way!”

“But it’s still bleeding!”

“But nothing! If we get a grown up to look at it, dad’s gonna find out about it and then just start yelling at me.” Asbel made a face. Sure he ended up getting himself hurt, but his father finding out he got hurt would just give him another thing to raise hell about. Asbel had already racked up enough points that he didn’t need to add to the fire. “I’m sure I can hide it until it heals up by itself, but in the mean time, don’t tell anyone, alright?”

“But-”

“Promise me!” Asbel was about to point with his injured hand but instead winced in pain. “O-okay?”

Hubert visibly swallowed. “Uh...” He stammered a bit, blinking rapidly, before finally looking up past Asbel’s shoulder.

“Asbel? Hubert?” A voice spoke up behind them.

Asbel jumped. He twisted his neck to see Cheria standing a few feet away with a basket in the crook of her arm. “Cheria!” He spun around to face her making totally sure his left hand was hidden behind his back. It twitched in pain, but he tried to hide that too. “Hello,” he casually.

Cheria squinted at him and tilted her head. “What are you two just standing there for?”

“Deh, Nothing. Just standing. Yeah...” He could feel this facade fading fast, but he had to keep it up somehow. Letting Cheria see his injury was just as bad as some grown up finding out. “What are you doing here? I thought you were stuck in bed for a while.”

“Oh… Well, I’m okay now! Grandpa asked me to buy somethings today, and I was about to walk home.” She gestured to the basket full of all kinds of little things. But she wasn’t distracted for long as she noticed Hubert’s nervousness and Asbel’s hidden hand. “Are you hiding something from me?”

“Me? No! Everything’s fine! Isn’t it, Hubert?”

Hubert had been silent the whole time, eyes bouncing back and forth between Asbel and Cheria. “Uh…” Hubert muttered. Asbel gave him a look that he’d better keep quiet about this. A few seconds passed while Hubert held his breath, torn between the two sides. Then he finally spoke: “...Asbel was climbing up the tree just now.”

“What?” Cheria gasped.

“Uh-huh. And he was half way up when he fell and hurt his hand. It’s pretty bad!”

Asbel groaned, dropping both of his hands to his sides. “You squealed on me!”

“Wait, which hand? Let me see.” Cheria moved up closer before clapping her hand over her mouth. “Asbel, that looks terrible!”

“Come on, I’m pretty sure it can heal up on it’s own.” Asbel looked from Cheria to Hubert, both of them looking really worried. He started rubbing the back of his injured hand with his whole one.

“Not if you don’t take care of it first! Un-believable...” Cheria frowned. “Wait, I think I just bought some bandages today!” She started digging into the bottom of her basket with her free hand. She suddenly stopped, then dropped to her knees and dug through the basket with both hands. “Oh no, I forgot to buy them!” She started to bite her lip while looking around before settling on looking at Hubert. “Hubert, listen. I need you to give me one of your socks.”

“His what?”

“My what?” Hubert flinched in surprise.

“Your sock! I’m going to use it to cover Asbel’s wound, and then I need you to go get a grown up to help us.”

“Wait,” Hubert said, looking up at Asbel, who was frowning in annoyance. “We can’t do that, because-”

Cheria, still on her knees, planted her fists on her hips. “If we don’t get Asbel help soon, his hand could get infected, and worse, he could lose his whole hand! Do you want that?”

Hubert’s lip started to quiver. “N-no!” He immediately sat down on the ground and started to remove his boot.

“Hubert, hold on.” Asbel complained. “No way I’m gonna lose my whole hand from this!”

But Hubert wasn’t listening. He had already given his fairly clean sock to Cheria, who ushered him off to go get help. Somehow watching him run off with one barefoot and his discarded shoe left behind seemed a little… pitiful.

Somehow Cheria had pulled out a pair of scissors from her basket and was cutting and tearing at the sock to make it longer. “Okay, I think I got this.” Cheria swallowed. “Sit down and let me look at it.”

Asbel groaned and rolled his eyes. “Cheria, I told you I’m going to fine!”

“No, you won’t! Now,” A moment’s hesitation, then Cheria reached out, grabbed his uninjured hand, and yanked him to the ground. “Sit!”

Asbel landed with a thunk on his already bruised behind. “Agh, okay, okay! Geez...” Asbel frowned in a mix of pain and embarrassment. Finally finished with the sock, Cheria took his injured hand scooted up closer to Asbel. Too close. Maybe he was just starting to feel faint before, but Asbel turned his head away while his face grew hot. Even if it was Cheria, it was embarrassing to have some girl focused on him like that.

“Argh.” Asbel winced.

“Sorry,” Cheria muttered, but other than that she was quiet. Asbel glanced back at her. Her cheeks were puffed out as she wrapped the cloth strips around the wound. Her face was colored pink, which didn’t make sense to him at all. She wasn’t the one getting her hand fixed.

Cheria wrapped the makeshift bandage around Asbel’s hand three times before she tied it up with a knot. She scooted backwards immediately. “Did that help?” She asked quietly.

“Uh, I guess?” Asbel held up his hand to look at it. It still hurt, but the remains of Hubert’s sock actually kind of worked! When he held it up closer to his face, he was startled by how much it smelled like feet that he couldn’t help but laugh.

“What’s so funny?!” Cheria frowned, her cheeks still puffed out.

Asbel grinned. “I was just thinking how I’d never thought to use a sock for something like this!”

“Well, I panicked, alright?” Cheria continued to pout. “If that’s how you say thanks, then maybe I won’t help the next time you get hurt!”

Asbel sighed with a wry smile. Cheria was always like this, happy one minute and then annoyed the next. But if she wasn’t like that, she wouldn’t be Cheria. Even if it was annoying sometimes she got back to her normal self soon enough.

Cheria’s frown slowly melted away, replacing it with a look of worry. “Why were you trying to hide your hand? Don’t you know how bad it can get if you leave it like that?”

“I had it under control!”

“But what about the next time you get hurt! You can’t leave something like that by itself. It really can get infected, you know?”

“Yeah yeah, I know.” Asbel waved off her worries his good hand, but her continued pout didn’t sit right with him. “Listen, I promise the next time I get hurt I won’t try to hide it, okay?”

“And you’ll go get help for it right away, right?”

Asbel traced a big letter X on his chest. “I promise.”

Cheria finally smiled. “Good.”

“But I honestly did have it under control! Sorta. Seeing all that blood got me pretty scared…” Cheria stuck out her lip at him in pity. Asbel flinched. “Actually, no! I was actually trying to, uh… Hubert! Hubert would have gotten all scared if he thought it was really bad. Probably would have wet his pants, too.”

Cheria gasped. “Hubert wets his pants?”

Asbel grinned and laughed. “Yeah, it’s actually pretty funny! You see one time, we were-”

The clank of lightly armored footsteps interrupted Asbel’s story. Hubert was jogging up to him and Cheria, still only wearing one shoe, with one of Lhant’s soldiers running after him. Asbel could never remember the other people’s names, but he knew this one to be Bailey.

“Master Asbel! How badly are you hurt?” Bailey hadn’t been one of the soldiers for long so it was easy to tell he had no idea what do about the situation once he got there.

Asbel pushed himself to his feet with his good hand “I’m not hurt that badly, see?” He presented his bandaged hand in the air. “I got it all taken care of already."

Bailey looked surprised for a moment, looking around to each kid one by one before addressing Asbel. “Well, I suppose that’s good. But I think I should take you back home just in case. Someone in your manor would know proper first aid. I hope.”

Asbel glanced down at Cheria, remembering his promise. He sighed. “Yeah, okay...”

Probably because he was trying to maintain some sense of urgency, Bailey reached over and got a firm grip on Asbel’s upper arm and guided him down the road toward the manor. Right away Asbel yanked his arm away from his grip, but he resigned himself to walking beside Bailey, his shoulders slumped in defeat. Cheria finally stood up off of the ground. Hubert stood beside her, probably trying to figure out how to wear a boot without a sock. The two somberly watched him go. Fitting, since Asbel was marching off to his death.

Well, it might as well have been. Once his dad saw his hand Asbel would never hear the end of it. Still, he managed to climb the tree he had always wanted to. This way he could face his dad without any regrets.

Except for one, he just realized. Asbel spun around to look back on the shrinking Hubert and Cheria, waving to them with his good hand. “Sorry about your sock, Hubert! And Cheria, thank you!”

\- - -

And that, in short, is the story about how there was now a guard permanently stationed by the apple tree.

**Author's Note:**

> The fact there are basically no fics on here about Asbel and Cheria with them actually being the main focus is a crying shame. So I'm hoping to remedy that! I'm not too used to writing romance so I'm starting off small with cute kids!
> 
> To be honest, this whole fic was written so I could write little Hubert running off wearing only one shoe. Please comment if you enjoyed this!


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